


As We Unravel

by stardropdream



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wraps up her wounds, methodically and calm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As We Unravel

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ December 27, 2010.

Doumeki’s hand is slow and steady, a steering and dabbing with a little ball of soft cotton that burns across her skin despite his gentleness. His movements are surprisingly delicate, as delicate as his fingers can imagine. For the first time, though, the fingers falter.   
  
Himawari pauses too, and remembers to breathe. She hasn’t realized until that moment that she is holding her breath. She cranes her neck, peering over her shoulder at him and watching. She breathes a little easier at the sight, despite her every effort to remain unresolved, to remain tensed and ready to dart at a moment’s notice. She holds the soft cotton of a towel to her body, to shield her even as she exposes her back, her every failing as the scars bleed down the curve of her back. When she turns her eyes up from Doumeki’s hand to his face only to realize that Doumeki is already gazing at her, eyes fixed on the part of Himawari’s face that he can see, she still manages to jump a little, self-conscious. It is understandable in this situation, but even so it is alarming. She is used to having control of these things, being able to smooth out even the simplest of emotions—even something as simple as surprise.   
  
“Kunogi,” Doumeki says, his eyes not wavering—though she does not expect them, too, she can’t help but be unnerved by his directness, even now. Even the directness of his eyes prevent any suggestion of unkindness. “Are you alright?”   
  
Himawari turns her gaze around and down to where her hands press against her chest, holding up the towel. She looks at the curve of her knees and hunches a little towards them.   
  
“Yes,” she says calmly. “I’m fine.”  
  
“Does it still hurt?” Doumeki insists, and Himawari hears the soft shift as he picks up another cotton ball, dipping it in a bowl of warm water already cooling to a chill. She shivers when he presses the cotton ball to her back, soaking up as much of the blood as he can, gently, waiting for the skin to knit back together and knowing it never will.   
  
Himawari’s fingers twitch and she takes a deep breath, silent and steeling herself.   
  
It does hurt.   
  
It throbs, it burns. It is raw still. And it hurts in all the ways she knew it would hurt but hadn’t cared, and still didn’t care. She could feel all the luck, all the damage, all the shards of broken glass clamoring underneath her skin, churning and pressing against her nerve-endings fierce enough to make her muscles scream but not enough to make her feel numb. She closes her eyes and feels it pulsing, burning raw and clamoring still beneath her skin, across her back, up into her eyeballs. She can hear all the years of sobbing and anger, feel all the years she’d caused suffering. Even to those she cares about more than she thought possible. She can feel it all the way down to her bones.  
  
But she knows she cannot tell Doumeki this. She does not want to worry him.  
  
“I’m fine,” she says. She licks her lip and feels the lie lodge into her throat until she forces it out, “It no longer hurts.”   
  
The fresh cotton ball dabs at her back, sticking. He moves his fingers over the arch of her spine and across her shoulder blades, following the contours and curves of the angry scars scraped across her back. Her scars are still open, weeping wounds and she doubts they will ever heal completely. There would always be scars, and always the threat of ripping the wounds open again, should she move too quickly, too freely.   
  
The cotton ball is saturated with water and blood, and she can feel the single drop of water—or blood, she cannot be sure—roll down parallel to her spine. She feels Doumeki’s thumb brush at her skin, making her shiver—from pain, though it is certainly not his intention—as he brushes the water, or blood, away.   
  
“You flinched,” he says, counters her earlier statement. His tone is mild and unoffended, but the words are thick and heavy with meaning he never quite says but Himawari understands.   
  
“So I did,” she agrees, quietly. She takes a long breath again, feels her eyelashes flicker as she shifts her eyes around the room, focusing on anything she can that doesn’t remind her of Doumeki or the pain ripping down her back in clawed scars.   
  
Himawari reminds herself to breathe, self-conscious of her attempts to remain still. The urge to recoil, to flinch, to pull away is there and always has been there—but the restless movements are replaced with the occasional sighs, the hopes that she is not so obvious to Doumeki as she fears she is.   
  
As if he senses her thoughts, Doumeki says, “It’s alright.”   
  
He pats the last remnants of blackened blood and reddened water. A few drops drizzle down her back and press into the hemline of her skirt. He discards the other cotton ball and retrieves a new one. He strokes along her scars, and it is painful but also almost mortifyingly comforting.   
  
There is another shift, and she feels and sees Doumeki lean over beside her, reaching out to grab a fresh roll of bandages. Himawari watches him from the corner of her eye, though she does not turn her head. Her hands have started to shake.   
  
“You’ll have to lower your arms,” he says as he leans back again, behind her. Himawari’s eyes flicker again and she closes her eyes, feels her jaw clench. She hears the apologetic tone in Doumeki’s voice, and it only makes her feel guiltier, only makes her bite her lip harder.   
  
And yet she’d known this would happen. When he’d offered his help, she hadn’t protested.   
  
Slowly, she lets the towel drop from her body.  
  
His fingertips brush along the insides of her forearms, elbow to wrist, and Himawari flinches—her sensitive, thinned skin, so thin she can see her veins. Her eyes flicker again, and her breath catches.   
  
“Lift your arms,” he says, still apologetic, fingers not recoiling.   
  
Himawari nods and holds her arms up, quick to follow his suggestion as a means to forget her tension. She lifts her arms, touching at her hair for lack of anything else to do. She’d let the long locks of hair curl over her shoulders, but now she piles the curly hair into itself, holding it up on top of her head, a large, messy bun clenched between her fingers so that they no longer shake. She shifts up onto her knees, making herself as comfortable as she can, arches her back so he can wrap the bandages flatter against her body. She glances over her shoulder as she does that, feeling vulnerable and exposed as she swallows thickly.  
  
Doumeki is looking at her, in silence. She studies his expression before turning her face away again to study her knees. Her face is flushed red before Doumeki has even touched her. She is helplessly aware of her naked belly and chest, the naked curve of her back, the naked slump of her shoulders, the slouch of her neck. She is exposed, naked, and revealed. Her every whitened scar and darkened scar, her abrasions and lacerations—he can see it all.   
  
She winces when the gauze touches at her back. She turns her head up, clenching her fingers into her hair and staring up at the ceiling with deliberate intent not to see Doumeki or watch the way Doumeki’s hands appear on her front, curling the bandage slowly along the swell of her chest and the flat of her stomach. He unravels the roll of gauze, and Himawari tilts her head down long enough to watch the way Doumeki’s arm curves around her body, as if holding her. It gives her a strange comfort even as it makes her chest swell with emotion and she blinks rapidly to prevent the tears.   
  
Her stomach turns and she breathes in, shakily. It is too warm and gentle for her to fear, but the conditioned reaction is still there, threatening to lodge in her throat and force her movements. His arm slowly unfurls from around her as the gauze presses to her back again, encasing the bleeding scars. But his arm returns all the same.   
  
She wonders if his arm would be warm if she placed her hands upon it. She thinks it would be. She thinks there would be comfort there.   
  
She, of course, does not indulge in the desire. She is used to resisting indulgence. It is enough that, even with him not touching her, she can still feel the way his body radiates warmth and comfort, and she can feel his presence all along her back and sides and the back of her neck and in every bump of her spine.   
  
Doumeki finishes wrapping the gauze and secures the loose ends. His fingers are all smooth fingernails and knobby knuckles.   
  
Himawari laughs, despite herself.   
  
“What is it?” he asks.  
  
She shakes her head, slowly. “I just think… how different it is. I think sometimes that if I were to move my fingers down a whole spine, one bump by one bump…” She laughs, a little self-consciously. Her smile is stainless steel, even if Doumeki cannot see the way she has smoothed out the corners so perfectly. “My mind would be absolutely quiet and in those empty moments I could just follow the spine and then before I even know what’s happening, I would find myself at the base of the spine completely different.”   
  
Doumeki’s movements are, as ever, slow and methodical. He doesn’t respond, but she doesn’t expect him to. His hands palm at the roll of bandages now, and he shifts it, first behind Himawari and then in front of her. Occasionally his fingers brush bare skin, but it is brief and Himawari half-expects she’ll flinch should he linger for too long. Most often, it’s his palm holding up against her back, tethering the loose ends up the bandages against her back so they do not slump. His fingers move around her body, and every time she sees or feels him, her nerve-endings give an involuntary start that she only just manages to suppress before he notices anything. She can feel the tension arching in her shoulders and pressing insistently against the back of her neck. She is too exhausted. She only wants to sleep. Her hands shake in her hair.   
  
She is not used to things like this. She is not used to any contact beyond what she herself initiates. Holding a hand, a pinky promise, a touch on the shoulder. They are always inconsequential touches, ones that she can control and can draw away—but it is always just as devastating. Just sitting here, with no purpose other than to wrap her wounds, makes her shake from the intimacy. She is not quite comfortable with it, but understands the necessity.   
  
“Did you… get to see him, too?” she asks, and there is no question of whom she speaks.  
  
There is a pause, and Doumeki says, simply, “No.”  
  
“I guess he must have fallen asleep,” Himawari says, trying to keep the waver from her voice, and resisting the urge to touch at her scars, to dig her fingernails into her scars so that she never forgets and they never fade and the pain that pulses underneath her skin spikes. She swallows thickly.  
  
“Hn,” Doumeki agrees. His hands move slowly around her body, trailing the stark white of bandage in their wake.   
  
Himawari steadies herself with deep, silent breaths, her fingers curling tighter into her hair so she does not pull away. But then Doumeki reaches the end of the roll. He moves slowly, methodically, as he pins the bandage in place, careful and mindful not to prick her skin instead.   
  
“Done,” he says, and pulls his hands away smoothly.  
  
Himawari releases her hands in her hair, and the folds of black curls tumble down her back. She breathes out as it presses up against her neck and back, hiding the scars from view. Her hands reach for the towel again, though now that the bandages are wrapped completely around her body, there is nothing to show that isn’t covered by white bandages. All the same, she reaches for the towel, wishing her shirt was closer, but it is folded neatly on her bed.   
  
Doumeki’s fingers fold around hers, holding her hand still. She starts in surprise, unable to think of anything other than the fact that her hands are very small in comparison to Doumeki’s.   
  
“You’ll be okay,” is all Doumeki says, and then releases her hands.   
  
She closes her eyes and steadies herself, her heart thundering from the contact, from the words—from the words she’d always wanted to hear but never dared to hope for.   
  
“Ah,” she says, breathless.   
  
He shifts. He’s closer to her, in a brief second, and then gone completely—standing to retrieve her shirt for her and holding it out to her with averted gaze.   
  
She takes it, lowers her eyes, and slips it on.  
  
“Thank you,” she says.   
  
“Hn.”   
  
She stands, too. She presses her hands over the front of her clothes, trying to smooth them out. When she smiles up at Doumeki, she knows it is not a true smile, and that he can see through that, but this does not stop her from showing the way her flawless smile curves in just the right—or wrong—way.   
  
He is, of course, not convinced.   
  
He closes his eyes and says, quietly, but loud enough to shake Himawari to her core, “It’ll all be alright.”


End file.
